A goal of Warlords is to tone down the raw thoroughput of heals. Players will not always be at 100% health, creatures will be stronger, and better gear will not cause scaling to spiral out of control.

The number of instant-cast heals is being reduced, a list of spells being changed is given in the blog.

Damage-absorption abilities are being toned down, as they can take the place of direct healing if they are too strong.

The healing from auto-targeted or passive heals will be greatly reduced and slightly less smart to make the healing experience more interactive.

Low-throughput, low-mana-cost heals like Nourish and Holy light are being removed, since they don't really add depth to gameplay.

Multi-target heals will be less mana-efficient to strike a better balance between single and multi target healing.

Base mana regen is increased a great deal at an early gear level.

Base Resilience and Battle Fatigue will hopefully be reduced to 0%, and PvP spike damage will be reduced as well by lowering Critical Damage and Critical Heals to 150% of their normal effect.

Click the cut to read the blog!

Blizzard

Last week, we talked about squishing stats and pruning unnecessary complexity as part of our ongoing design goals for World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor. This time, we'll look at a few topics all related to one vital element: health.

Player Health and Resilience

In the next expansion, we're planning several interconnected changes designed to provide better-tuned gameplay for healers and improve the healing dynamic in PvP.

The high amount of base Resilience and Battle Fatigue in Mists of Pandaria currently causes characters to feel much weaker in PvP than they do in PvE. To address this disparity, we're approaching Warlords of Draenor with the goal of shrinking that gap as much as possible. To reduce dependence on Resilience, we needed to increase player survivability against other players, and we chose to do this by essentially doubling (post-squish) player health.On its own, that increase in health would make players more survivable in the world at large, so we're also increasing creature damage and the effectiveness of healing spells to balance things out. The net result of these changes is that individual attacks will knock a smaller chunk off of a player's health pool in PvP, but your survivability in PvE won't be affected.

Doubling player health gave us room to reduce Resilience and Battle Fatigue, but our goal was to be able to remove them entirely. In order to achieve that, we're also reducing PvP spike damage across the board by lowering Critical Damage and Critical Heals to 150% of their normal effect (down from 200%).

Our hope is that these changes allow us to reduce Base Resilience and Battle Fatigue to 0%. It's possible that we'll still find a need for some minor amount of Base Resilience and/or Battle Fatigue, and we'll be testing these changes extensively and adjusting as needed.

Retuning Healing Spells

One of our goals for healing in Warlords of Draenor is to tone down the raw throughput of healers relative to the size of player health pools. Currently, as healers and their allies acquire better and better gear, the percentage of a player's health that any given heal restores increases significantly. As a result, healers are able to refill health bars so fast that we have to make damage more and more “bursty” in order to challenge them. Ideally, we want players to spend some time below full health without having healers feel like the players they're responsible for are in danger of dying at any moment. We also think that healer gameplay would be more varied, interesting, and skillful if your allies spent more time between 0% and 100%, rather than just getting damaged quickly to low health, forcing the healer to then scramble to get them back to 100% as quickly as possible.To that end, we're buffing heals less than we're increasing creature damage. s will be deliberately less potent compared to health pools than before the item squish. Additionally, as gear improves, the scaling rates of health and healing will now be very similar, so the relative power of any given healing spell shouldn't climb so much over the course of this expansion. For those concerned about what this means for raiding, don't worry—we're taking all of these changes into account when designing Raid content for Warlords of Draenor.

It's also important to note that spells that heal based on a percentage of maximum health are being effectively buffed by the massive increase to player health pools, so we're lowering those percentages to offset the effect. That may make them appear to have been nerfed—however, the net result is that those percentage-based heals stay about the same as before relative to other heals.

All of these changes apply to damage-absorption shields as well. Additionally, we're toning down the power of absorbs in general. When they get too strong, absorption effects are often used in place of direct healing instead of as a way to supplement it. We will, of course, take these changes into account when tuning specializations that rely heavily on absorbs, such as Discipline Priests.

We also took a look at healing spells that were passive or auto-targeted (so-called "smart" heals). We want healers to care about who they're targeting and which heals they're using, because that makes healer gameplay more interactive and fun. To that end, we're reducing the healing of many passive and auto-targeted heals, and making smart heals a little less smart. Smart heals will now randomly pick any injured target within range instead of always picking the most injured target. Priority will still be given to players over pets, of course. Another of our goals for healing in this expansion is to strike a better balance between single-target and multi-target healing spells. We've taken a close look at the mana efficiency of our multi-target heals, and in many cases, we're reducing their efficiency, usually by reducing the amount they heal. Sometimes, but more rarely, raising their mana cost was a better decision. We want players to use multi-target heals, but they should only be better than their single-target equivalents when they heal more than two players without any overhealing. This way, players will face an interesting choice between whether to use a single-target heal or a multi-target heal based on the situation.

Finally, we're removing the low-throughput, low-mana-cost heals like , , , and , because we think that while they do add complexity, they don't truly add depth to healing gameplay. (We're also renaming some spells to re-use those names. For example, Healing Wave is being redubbed .) However, we still want healers to think about their mana when deciding which heal to cast, and so the mana costs and throughputs of many spells are being altered to give players a choice between spells with lower throughput and lower cost versus spells with higher throughput and higher costs. Here are some examples from each healer class:Druid Higher Efficiency:Healing Touch, Rejuvenation, Wild MushroomDruid Higher Throughput:Regrowth, Wild Growth

Shaman Higher Efficiency:, Riptide, Healing RainShaman Higher Throughput:Healing Surge, Chain HealAll of this discussion of efficiency may cause most healers to start worrying about mana regeneration and their mana pool. To allay those concerns, we've increased base mana regen a great deal at early gear levels, while having it scale up less at later gear levels. This will make all of these changes play well even in early content such as Heroic Dungeons and the first tier of Raid content, and also play well in the final Raid tier without mana and efficiency becoming irrelevant due to extremely high regeneration values.

That's a lot of big changes for healers: reduced throughput, more triage, less powerful “smart” heals, weaker absorbs, fewer spells, and a new focus on efficiency decisions. We're confident that we can apply lessons learned from previous expansions to make this the best healer experience yet: more dynamic, engaging, non-punishing, and frankly a lot more fun.

Instant-Cast Heals

Over time, healers have gained a bigger and bigger arsenal of heals that they can cast while on the move, which removes the inherent cost that movement is intended to have for them, while also limiting players' ability to counter healing in PvP. This left silences and crowd control (which we're trying to curb—see "Pruning the Garden of War") as the only ways to actually limit an enemy player's healing output. We're still preserving the option to instantly heal, but are reducing the number of instant-cast healing abilities overall. Here are some examples:Druid

Comments

Comment by cephadex

on 2014-03-08T22:09:52-06:00

You know, because it already was so incredibly easy to heal as holy priest, after they nerfed the crap out of it in MoP. We only had a very small number of instant cast and no 'smart' heals that heal automatically or what have you. So now they're making the few spells we had that were instant have a cast time? You know, because I've not had any struggles with mana, ever, the solution is definitely to make priest spells cost more and heal less. Well done!

Comment by Albertagator

on 2014-03-08T22:21:31-06:00

Haven't they pretty much said this exact thing with every single expansion since WotLK?

Comment by kalibri

on 2014-03-09T00:02:31-06:00

Haven't they pretty much said this exact thing with every single expansion since WotLK?

QFT.

Comment by PrairieChicken

on 2014-03-09T00:31:50-06:00

Well spellcasters have to actually fakecast to get interrupt instead of instacasting everything. This will distinguish good healers from bad ones even more.

Comment by Agonee

on 2014-03-09T01:34:35-06:00

Can we have a cast time of 5 secs on a Renew? Priests are too OP!

Comment by Nopenopeyes

on 2014-03-09T01:42:57-06:00

Instant cast spells given cast times? Seriously? Hope there's a plan to peel back the interrupts then or healers will likely be useless. Anyone with any recollection of BC holy paladins should be able to grasp why this is a bad idea.

Previous dev blogs have stated that the amount of CC in the game will be curbed heavily, and that interrupts and silence effects will be separate, or something along those lines.This will make having less instant casts a great deal less painful

Comment by Pfenix

on 2014-03-09T03:34:10-05:00

So basically healers will be nerved for movement heavy fights (which Blizz seems to love lately)...no instant cast spells means more deaths in those bosses that require almost constant movement....not too happy with that.

Comment by ChibiSkittles

on 2014-03-09T05:24:02-05:00

Didnt they try something like this in cata and people freaked out?

Comment by wrongheaded

on 2014-03-09T05:52:59-05:00

I'm not sure about the cast times on heals yet, as supposedly we're supposed to see a big change in gameplay (less CC, less burst) which would mean we have more opportunities to stand still. That might actually be a good thing.

Ironically my big concern in this post was talking about upping world mob damage. It's fine for most classes, but non-tank monks and rogues were kind of squishy this expansion. More health pools are nice but those two classes are going to need to be buffed more than average or this could become a real problem. Already they're the two least popular classes in the game, and since monks bring raid utility (bye bye Tricks of the Trade ;_; ) I think the common factor is difficulty in leveling and not utility (also monks are pretty good in PVP atm so that's not the reason either).

Also, since we're fiddling with hybrids could priests and druids get a glyph that turns their silence into a 24-second-cooldown interrupt? Sometimes a silence on a long timer just doesn't cut it...

Comment by AngelicMew

on 2014-03-09T09:21:52-05:00

"interactive, interesting, efficiency, dynamic, engaging"

At the start of a new expansion this is always the wording used and we are told to "trust us". So let's get down to what will happen imho.WoD will release, healing will change too much and people won't like it. (Even if it is better) Less healers on each server will cause forum rants.Heals will be buffed and one certain healing class will stand out and more "balancing" will ensue.

I like the changes and won't judge till I've tried healing again, but I'd just like to say they shouldn't change up too much. It's been from Cata that they said people won't always be at 100% HP during fights, but that never happened as far as I've seen.

Comment by Shamanism

on 2014-03-09T09:29:57-05:00

Blizzard you suck.

Sincerely, an Uplift Happy Monk

Comment by AnrDaemon

on 2014-03-09T09:39:03-05:00

Anyone know what they smoking? I need some rest for my head too.

Comment by Farmbuyer

on 2014-03-09T12:54:13-05:00

I see a lot of changes that simply mean more opportunities for the bad DPS (making up 90% of WoW's current toxic playerbase) to blame healers for their own avoidable deaths.

Comment by Menardis

on 2014-03-09T13:46:07-05:00

1.5 seconds is an eternity in current game design when everyone can move out of range in the literal blink of an eye during your average boss encounter. I have a Priest and the changes remind me of early Cataclysm when Disc became a mascot spec. I also have a Hunter main and I am not excited by the prospect of being a mobile dps stressing out every healer because I disengage so much around the place trying to triage everybody with crappy cast timed heals and blowing cooldowns when they shouldn't have to.

This, along with active mitigation for tanks being the standard, does not promise a healthy start to WoD.

Consider this; part of the overall problem at the start of Cataclysm wasn't just the healing changes. It was the playerbase who had gotten used to the game design. The talent tree system was a welcome overhaul along with other fundamental class changes but these sweeping, groundbreaking changes are getting out of hand when they do not fit the end game meta for movement, utility and awareness being the key components to being a good raider. Playing a healer meant getting blamed for group wipes on trash because no one had bothered to read up on all the changes or learn how to adapt. Then Blizzard did an U-turn later on anyway.

Now we look like we are facing more of the same kind of stunted thinking for WoD which was looking to be a really good sounding expansion. I admit, a lot of these changes sound great but a lot of the changes seem to be because half the time people in PvP were being stunned or mezzed to death, or people were so bad they didn't try to interrupt healers and kept trying to nuke them down and Blizzard, instead of tackling the issue of some players just being bad at PvP when there's no in game guides or easy starting points to learn the basics, had opted for sweeping changes to turning healers into glorified totems.

Some control abilities are being toned down or removed but let's be honest here; the game will still revolve around certain classes at any point of an expansion having too much of at least two of the following attributes compared to other classes; a) damage b) healing c) control / utility d) buff stacking. So we get a simplified, more boring game but with the same base problems that have affected the PvP balance.

I am generally unimpressed by some of the changes, as they are blatant design flaws. Level 90 Priest talents all with a cast time, you say? I hear Shadowpriests needed that dps nerf. Disarm removed? Shadowpriests didn't need that either against melee, not with instant casts being removed.

That's just one spec, and I don't play Shadow. The problems are glaringly obvious to me and the more I read into it, the more I see, and this whole twitter thing doesn't do enough to make a coherent forum or blog to address all the issues being raised. There's too much in between the lines.

Comment by Menardis

on 2014-03-09T15:25:56-05:00

Losing a ton of instant casts but Disc is getting Holy Nova exclusively.

That 10 yard range PBAoE heal will be incredibly useful in PvP and PvE when nine times out of ten, people are more spread than the legs of a teenage nubile girl after her first crush plays a song written for her on his electric guitar.

This tells me to be wary of the next expansion and not to get my hopes up too much.

Comment by Cowsarebak

on 2014-03-09T16:02:06-05:00

I don't care about any of the other changes they're making, because I know for a fact that giving cast times to PoM, WoG and WG is going to feel unbelievably awkward and clunky for me. I didn't think it was possible, but these changes sound WORSE than the changes made in Cataclysm. Why does Blizzard constantly feel the need to nerf healers to balance the game?

Even as a hardcore PvP player myself, I don't see the need for these changes. I'm actually with the PvE people on this one. Yeah, the amount of CC in the game is a bit ridiculous ATM, but other than that, PvP is more balanced now as it's ever been, IMO. (And I say that as someone who's PvPed as a DPS AND healer more or less continuously since late BC.)

Healers are OP sometimes in PvP, but only if they're good. Any good player playing any class is going to seem OP to a bad to average player. Bad to average healers are just as balanced as they should be. Ditto with DPS. But, as usual, Blizzard is using a sledgehammer to fix a problem that could just as easily be solved with a screwdriver.

Combined with the higher difficulty in WoD 5-mans, I can't help but feel like this is just going to be a repeat of Cataclysm, if not worse: healers unsubbing or respeccing en masse, 45-minute DPS queues for 5-mans, and I don't even want to think about LFR queues.

The more I hear about this expansion, the more I feel like I just want to sit this one out. My game time ran out a day or so ago, and while I was tempted to renew it at first, I have virtually no desire to do so after hearing these changes. Maybe I'll come back at the end of the expansion, after they realize their mistake (again) and hopefully undo some of these ridiculous changes.

Comment by Willblade

on 2014-03-09T16:38:15-05:00

I have a feeling we'll be seeing 10 dk raids ... I can see it now, blood dks more effective at healing than all healers

Comment by OromisGlaedr

on 2014-03-09T21:07:48-05:00

Maybe I'm missing something, but do the Crit nerfs affect the Crit damage all spells do? Or just spells against players? Because if it is all, which would make sense with the wording, it would drastically lower the dps of Fire and Frost mages. I mean, half of our damage (roughly) comes from crits. Since Crits would be nerf'd to only 75% of their efficiency, wouldn't that mean mages would lose approximately 12.5% of their dps totals (25% decrease, multiplied into 50% of total damage)? Since mages are a top-tier damage class, wouldn't losing that damage and reducing our singular bubble and heal effect make us practically useless? I'm not even concerned with the PvP side of things. I feel like I would have a terrible time soloing any PvE or quest content if that were the case. If I'm wrong, someone please point it out

Edit: And nevermind. Found my own answer. It's only against players.

Comment by rinkworks

on 2014-03-10T10:42:34-05:00

Everyone complaining that cast times on heals will make them worse off with Thok, Pandaria Gold Challenge Modes, etc, need to understand that WoD fights will be tuned for WoD classes. It doesn't and won't ever matter whether the WoD version of your class can still do Thok at 90 or not, because nobody will be.

Blizzard devs have said repeatedly that WoD raid mechanics will take all the various class changes into consideration, but this should go without saying. They're not going to tune WoD fights specifically for vanilla rogues and BC paladins either.

Comment by Nevermourn

on 2014-03-10T12:43:02-05:00

really i would prefer if PVP were faster-paced than it is now... this would appear to slow it down even more. not sure if I'm happy about it.